End-of-Semester Straight Talk

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NOTE: Jacob Neusner, a former professor of religious studies at Brown University, now at Bard College, and a noted Judaic scholar, wrote the following article for the Brown Daily Herald in the early 1980s as a commencement address he knew would never be delivered. He was offended by the erosion of standards in higher education, he explained, not only among students but among faculty members who could restore academic excellence, but won't. It has been my habit since I first saw this piece reprinted in 1983, to submit it to the campus newspaper where I was teaching at commencement time, as a caveat to those who would teach as well as to those who would learn.
T. Pease

So go, unlearn the lies we taught you

By Jacob Neusner

We the faculty take no pride in our educational achievements with you. We have prepared you for a world that does not exist, indeed, that cannot exist.

You have spent four years supposing that failure leaves no record. You have learned at Brown that when your work goes out poorly, the painless solution is to drop out.

But starting now, in the world in which you go, failure marks you. Confronting difficulty by quitting leaves you changed. Outside Brown, quitters are no heroes.

With us you could argue about why your errors were not errors, why mediocre work really was excellent, why you could take pride in routine and slipshod presentation. Most of you, after all, can look back on honor grades for most of what you have done. So, here grades can have meant little in distinguishing the excellent from the ordinary.

But tomorrow, in the world in which you go, you had best not defend errors but learn from them. You will be ill-advised to demand praise for what does not deserve it and abuse those who do not give it.

For four years we created an altogether forgiving world, in which whatever slight effort you gave was all that was demanded. When you did not keep appointments, we made new ones. When your work came in beyond the deadline, we pretended not to care.

Worse still, when you were boring, we acted as if you were saying something important. When you were garrulous and talked to hear yourself talk, we listened as if it mattered. When you tossed on our desks writing upon which you had not labored, we read it and even responded, as though you had earned a response.

When you were dull, we pretended you were smart. When you were predictable, unimaginative and routine, we listened as if to new and wonderful things. When you demanded free lunch, we served it. And all this why?

Despite your fantasies, it was not even that we wanted to be liked by you. It was that we did not want to be bothered, and the easy way out was pretense: smiles and easy Bs.

It is conventional to quote in addresses such as these. Let me quote someone you've never heard of, Professor Carter A. Daniel, Rutgers University:

College has spoiled you by reading papers that don't deserve to be read, listening to comments that don't deserve a hearing, paying attention even to the lazy ill-informed and rude. We had to do it for the sake of education. But nobody will do it again. College has deprived you of adequate preparation for the next 50 years. It has failed you by being easy, free, forgiving, attentive, comfortable, interesting, unchallenging fun. Good luck tomorrow. (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 7, 1979)

That is why, on this commencement day, we have nothing in which to take much pride.

Oh, yes, there is one more thing. Try not to act toward your co-workers and bosses as you have acted toward us. I mean, when they do not give you what you want but have not earned, don't abuse them, insult them, act out with them your parlous relationships with your parents. This, too, we have tolerated. It was, as I said, not to be liked.

Few professors actually care whether or not they are liked by peer-paralyzed adolescents, fools so shallow as to imagine professors care not about education but about popularity. It was, again, to be rid of you.

So go, unlearn the lies we taught you. To life!

Note: Neusner is now Distinguished Service Professor of the History and Theology of Judaism, and a Senior Fellow, Institute of Advanced Theology, at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.